You never know what you might find in Edgar winner John McAleer’s mystery correspondence. As my brother Paul and I comb through his voluminous records we’ve become numb to discoveries such as letters from Golden Age of Detection icons – Dame Agatha, Georges Simenon, or Leslie Chateris. Not to mention big-screen legends like John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich. To paraphrase Humphrey Bogart from The Big Sleep, “We don’t even pass out cigars anymore over such finds.”
A few years ago, however, one lost gem did hook our attention—big time! Paul found a small hardcover chapbook containing a handwritten mystery. The first page—yellowed and pulpy—announced, “Stories of Private Detective Henry von Stray, by John J. McAleer.” The book contained a full mystery story entitled, “The Case of the Illustrious Banker.” Later published in Edgar & Shamus Go Golden. (Down & Books)
In order to establish when von Stray was created Paul did a little sleuthing of his own in attempt to unearth a few clues about the elusive London-based detective and his able collaborator in the detection of crime—affable beetle expert Professor John Dilpate. Paul solved the case.
In order to establish when von Stray was created Paul did a little sleuthing of his own in attempt to unearth a few clues about the elusive London-based detective and his able collaborator in the detection of crime—affable beetle expert Professor John Dilpate. Paul solved the case.
In our father’s 1937 diary, an August 4th entry reveals how the senior McAleer wrote at least three von Stray mysteries. (A search for the remaining two stories from the original series remains afoot.) Proving von Stray was created in the 1930s, has important historical significance for the crime fiction genre since it makes von Stray, in all likelihood, the last of the great master sleuths to emerge from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (a literary period existing predominately during the 1920s and 1930s.) In somewhat of an ironical twist, some 40 years later, McAleer’s Rex Stout: A Biography, won the Edgar Award over Golden Age “founder”—the Queen of Mystery herself—Christie’s autobiography.
As a novelist and having taught classic crime fiction at Boston College for many years, I jumped at the chance to continue the von Stray series. The characters and setting were too fun to limit the amazing find to one von Stray adventure. I sensed this inimitable detective had many more crimes to solve and it would be my pleasure to help him do so. My first von Stray mystery “The Singular Case of the Bandaged Bobby” appeared in the September 2024 Sherlock Holmes issue of Mystery Magazine and was later selected for the Best Private Eye Stories of 2025.
The first full-book collection of von Stray stories A Casebook of Crime (Level Best Books) was released this February. The volume also features my father’s only known surviving von Stray mystery. A publisher’s note says of the collection, “[Andrew] seamlessly picks up where the elder McAleer left off, brilliantly and authentically capturing—and not without a touch of light humor—von Stray’s thrilling adventures and unique methods of crime detection through 1920s England. So authentic in fact, mystery lovers will virtually travel back in time to a bygone era where they will genuinely feel as if they’re enjoying timeless, never-before-seen century-old classic puzzle whodunits.”
Shortly after its release, A Casebook of Crime became an Amazon bestseller surpassing a collection of short stories written by none other than—Dame Agatha Christie!
John McAleer is the Edgar Allan Poe Award-winning author of Rex Stout: A Biography and creator of Golden Age Private Detective Henry von Stray. He also edited the Throndyke File and was a Pulitzer finalist.
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Andrew McAleer served in Afghanistan as a U.S. Army Historian and is the author of the Henry von Stray historical mysteries. Von Stray’s latest exciting exploits appear in the newly released: A Casebook of Crime: Thrilling Adventures of Suspense from the Golden Age of Mystery. (Level Best Books, 2025)
